Menu-Icons.com announces the release of Large Menu Icons, a royalty-free library of stock menu images for application developers and web designers. The new set includes 398 icons drawn in matching style, color and gamut. The Large Menu Icons collection sells for $49.00.

About Large Menu Icons

Large Menu Icons is the perfect choice for busy application and Web site developers. This collection of stock icons with matching properties such as style and colors, can be used in various projects and scripts, as well as on portals, blogs, forums, and web sites. Large Menu Icons will make an application, blog or applet look modern and consistent throughout. All icons in the Large Menu Icons collection are royalty-free. The entire collection is immediately available and comes with an online preview.

What’s Inside

The Large Menu Icons collection contains images representing all sides of the application work. Some of the icons in the set are: open, close, edit, validate, time, clock, error, OK, data, computer, archive, people, user, girl, man, admin, horse, car and more.

Technically, the set includes icons in a number of formats, sizes, color resolutions, and image styles. Every icon from the library comes in sizes of 16×16, 24×24, 32×32, 48×48 and 64×64 pixels. Normal, disabled, and highlighted versions are included for every icon. 256-color and semi-transparent True Color icons are supplied. Large Menu Icons are delivered in Windows Icon (ICO), Bitmap (BMP), GIF and PNG formats for instant integration into any systems. The entire Large Menu Icons collection is available for only $49.00. Source images are also available in SVG and AI formats for an additional payment.

Menu-Icons.com offers thousands of icons in the most difficult small resolutions. PDA and mobile developers and designers can enhance their software with smooth, perfectly rendered icons in the most convenient resolutions. Menu-Icons.com are available in all sizes common to desktop and mobile applications for mobile phones, communicators, and desktop applications. All icons offered by Menu Icons are royalty-free, ready-made and instantly available.

You’ve all seen the artist renditions. This is what Curiosity looks like to an engineer.

A few minutes into our interview last Thursday, I ask Tim Nichols, managing director of Global Aerospace, Defenses and Marine Industries at Siemens, if he was nervous about the Curiosity’s fate on Sunday. “Of course I am,” he says with a laugh, “We all know about missions to Mars — they’re complex.” None moreso than Curiosity’s elaborate landing sequence, designed to get the SUV-sized robot down safely.

He needn’t have worried. Late Sunday night, the rover successfully set down on the Martian landscape, overseen by a tense room of Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) engineers and watched by so many people here on Earth that all of NASA’s websites crashed. Like the rest of us, Nichols was glued to his screen. Unlike the rest of us, Nichols gets to say he had a hand in it. His company’s software designed Curiosity.

Curiosity is much larger than her unexpectedly long-lived predecessors, Spirit and Opportunity. This meant that she couldn’t just land bundled inside airbags like the smaller rovers.

Instead, the mission executed a complex series of maneuvers to eject the robot from its capsule and lower it to the ground, via a rocket-powered sky crane in a sequence of events that NASA called the Seven Minutes of Terror.

Curiosity was designed by the JPL at the California Institute of Technology. When it came time to coordinate the enormous team of designers and engineers that built Curiosity, the capsule, and the sky crane, JPL turned to Siemens. They needed to design the robot (relatively) cheaply and they needed to design it fast — the launch window for missions to Mars comes once every two years. If you miss the deadline, there’s a long wait ahead.
MSL Capsule with Rover NX CAE thermal model

If you squint, you can see Curiosity and the sky crane folded up together in the capsule.

Luckily, Siemens had developed software suited to this sort of project. They call it Product Lifecycle Management (PLM).

One of the costliest parts of creating a new physical product is building and testing prototypes. With PLM’s robust suite of simulators and version tracking, you can avoid a lot of physical prototyping — saving both time and money, and speeding up the development process. In essence, PLM turns the physical engineering of a product into a process that looks more and more like designing code.

PLM runs on a laptop, connected to a central asset manager, called the Team Center. Engineers can check out parts of the project, work on their problems and assignments, and then check it back in to the main branch. This allows for a lot of concurrent design work. “In the past, engineering teams would be somewhat isolated by discipline,” says Nichols, “The overall leadership recognized that they needed to bring all the groups together.”

This is a far cry from past projects, which would be designed as a series of handoffs between teams. First the thermal profiles would be worked out, then the aerodynamics, on down the line. Propagating changes between teams could become a nightmare. PLM changed all of that, Nichols says, giving the team the ability to “compress the schedule and … do many more design iterations.”
MSL NX CAD Exploded view of seperation stages

With luck, this is the only exploded view of the Mars lander that we’ll ever see.

If this sounds a lot like software engineering, especially the open source variety, it’s because it is. There’s a version control system, the ability to check code in and out of the system, and a set of test suites that allow you check the performance of your part of the module in relation to the whole. By keeping the objects in software for as long as possible, you can treat them like software, with all of the speed and flexibility that this implies.

Nichols says their suite of tools has been used to design everything from golf clubs — “Golf clubs are pretty sophisticated, though they haven’t helped my game.” — to aircraft carriers. Looking ahead, he predicts an increasing incidence of distributed international teams of contributors working on a project.
“Global virtual collaboration and engineering is really the future,” he says. “We want to see more of that.”

But first, Curiosity had to make it to Mars. “We all have our fingers crossed,” he said on Thursday. You can uncross them now, Mr Nichols.

Android or iPhone? The discussion continues. At the time the iPhone first hit the market, there was really no competition. Apple was playing in a class of its own. Early Android devices were dismal: slow UI response, redraw lags, and the overall “assemble-it-yourself” idea just didn’t with consumers.

Today, the situation has changed. With newest iPhone being a superb device and a luxurious platform, the newest Androids leave little to be desired. Today’s Androids have no UI lags, offer most of the same apps in the Android Market, and abandoned the do-it-yourself, LEGO style approach. Today, picking one system over another is more of a personal preference. Let’s try to find out what’s good about going the Apple route, and what benefits the Android way can bring.

Hardware and Model Selection

With Apple iPhone, you have a limited choice of only several models. Or, rather, you’re limited to just one current model in several versions that differ very little. There are a few older models you can get from the used market, but that’s about it. “You can have any color as long as it’s black”.

Android phones, on the other hand, come in many shapes, models and colors. Different manufacturers use completely different hardware. Different screens, CPUs, memory. Very different reliability and usability. Buying an Android phone will require you to do a research on what’s available, whereas you can’t really go wrong with any current iPhone. Are you a techie or a gadget guy? Look for an Android phone that flies with you. The rest will be served by Apple.

Screen

The newest generation of iPhones has a wonderful Retina display. These super high pixel density displays will render your apps, icons and photos so smooth it’s hard to believe. Kudos to Apple: they built one of the best screens ever.

Androids come with all kinds of displays. Some of the better ones can reach iPhones in resolution, but software integration is still lagging. Many apps are still using low-resolution icons and graphics designed to be displayed on lower-resolution screens. When choosing an Android phone, you will have to watch carefully to get a model with a good display. If you’re not good with numbers, icon resolutions, angles of view and other specs, just get an iPhone for the best screen ever.

Built-in Software and Interface

An iPhone is an iPhone. They’re all the same. One operating system, same user interface, the same set of pre-installed apps, exactly the same icons. You can customize it by moving things around and choosing a few icons on your own, but there’s only so much you’re allowed to do.

Androids are available in many flavors. Different firmware and dozens of OS versions, builds and codenames. Different sets of icons for exactly the same app. Many different shells and launchers. Fully customizable: you can make Android phones look like whatever you want (and it’s not all about custom icons) – but you must know what you’re doing. With such a huge variety, some devices are simply better as in simpler to use, more stable and working more reliable than others. If making your very own custom environment is fun for you, by all means buy the Android. If you like your phone working out of the box, get an iPhone and start using it right away.

Maintenance and Upgrades

iPhones don’t have a slot to use an external memory card. You’ll be stuck forever with the amount of memory you originally got. If you outgrow your iPhone, you’ll have to get another iPhone, bringing more dough to Apple.

Most but not all Android phones come with a microSD extension slot, allowing you to add more memory when you need it. With microSD cards getting cheaper every year, you will be better off in the long run if you buy an Android.

With iPhones, you can’t even replace a battery. If your battery dies in some years (they all do; lithium batteries die in 3-4 years), you’ll be shipping your iPhone back to Apple for a “major repair” (more money to Apple), or be shopping for a new iPhone (even more dough to Apple).

While some Android devices use similarly fixed batteries, most devices are easy: just lift the back cover and put a new battery in. A new battery will cost a few dollars, allowing you to buy a replacement phone when you want it.

Conclusion

Android phones are cheaper to buy and cheaper to upgrade and maintain. They’re more extensible and customizable. iPhones work great right out of the box, and offer possibly the best usage experience ever. Which one to pick? The choice is yours.

Even the most sophisticated of applications sometimes miss out on widespread public appeal they warrant due to a mediocre user interface, ensure that you avoid that little obstacle with the help of the super cool aero tool bar icons.

Making the right user interface is not a very easy task, immense amount of effort usually goes into planning and implementing the user interface to suit the basic needs and functionality your application fulfills and maintain a level of synchronization with the client base. Teenagers may find a dull and simple UI to be boring while when you are making a site that caters to high end business men playing around with too many colors and flash images may backfire. It is extremely important to strike the right balance, these aero tool bar icons strive to make your task that much easier.

These eye-catching icons are perfect for application development and are compatible with any application you may be making for Windows, mac OS, iOS or even Android operating systems. Now you can depict all the usual functions such as redo, undo, back, forward, refresh, zoom in, zoom out and anything else you may possibly fathom with the help of these colorful and classy icons. More than that you get many cool icons such as ones for web-cam, scanner, music functions, phone, calendar, knowledge etc., it is almost as if the designers sat down to think of anything you might actually need in the future and took the time off to make them.

The complete set has 281 icons in total and come in many formats including ICO, PNG, BMP and GIF. You do not need to wait for months in the process of deploying your app as these images are readily available in matter of days and that too in completely deployable state. Coming in five different sizes, you can get them in 256×256, 48×48, 32×32, 24×24 and 16×16 pixels.

These icons have an added positive working in their favor, which is their descriptive and visual appeal. Putting these in strategic position throughout your application lends you a very systematic and through appearance. Buying these readymade icons allow you to concentrate on developing the back end of your software, and also saves you the long hours you would otherwise have to spend in developing these images one by one. The images are present in two variants of color depth, 256 colors and 32 bit color.

Time has proven that the best of applications carry a simple design and are easy to navigate through; of course functionalities play an important role within itself. Save yourself the hassles associated with the tedious formulation of all the images, buy them right here and save immense amount of time to concentrate on developing the back end. It is a combination of colors and highly descriptive images are their biggest USP, using these gives the application a sleek and classy look, which makes the application look professional.

C-3PO is a functional character from the Star Wars. He is also played a major role in the TV shows Droids and appears rapidly in the series of Expanded Universe of comic books, novels, and video games. C-3PO has phonetically pronounced See-Threepio or Threepio for short. C-3PO is also played a major role in Star Wars, and this character has played same person in all Star Wars series. This role has played by Anthony Daniels.

C-3PO is also mentioned as protocol droid that has been designed to server humans and it carries that he is assured in over 6 millions forms of communications. Usually, C-3PO has seen by people in counterpart, R2-D2, and quirky droid. The prime function of C-3PO is translating or converting the languages into another language. So, it can make the meeting smooth and easier for different languages people. Due to huge benefits of C-3PO, it has managed to draw more appreciation from people across the globe. During that time C-3PO and Solo develop the strange
relationship, with the C-3PO quoting odds and Han defying them. Generally, Han will have shut C-3PO down however, because of mechanical failures on Falcon, the C-3PO is been plugged in ship or communicating with this to determine these problems. After the chase through Hoth asteroid field, Falcon escapes to the Cloud City at Bespin.

When exploring the room after arrival, C-3PO is been blasted by the storm trooper. In the search of Chewbacca heads to the Ugnaught recycling service where he finds dismembered droid. While Darth Vader reveals presence to group, the Chewbacca is sent in the holding cell, however is allowed to rebuild droid that he poorly does. Chewbacca carries partially rebuilt C3PO on back during the Han Solo’s encasement at carbonite.

Now, there are so many computer users looking for the best icons designs through which they can get advantages for their professional field. These 777icons are offering assortment advantages through which you can achieve desire result in your working field. These days, the 777icons are managing to draw more importance from users for its assortment advantages like:

These icons are very much compatible to windows

Also, these icons are available in 83760 icon images with 52 sets.

777icons are designed with transparency background in various states like highlighted, normal, and disabled.

Also, 777icons are available in various file formats like GIF, BMP, ICO, and PNG.

You can see that these icons are designed to use in assortment software fields like web designing, computer users, software development, blog, and forums. These icons are really having such a good quality through which all users are getting tons of benefits in their professional filed. This is the aspect making use of an icon software important. Software helps in making of best icons for the tools & library. This will give the customer acceptance on application. With plenty of icon program accessible in market, it is the hard thing while it comes to selecting of best one for meeting your desired requirements. But, making some considerations will significantly alleviate maze. Here are the aspects look at in target software.

Interface of icon program matters very much. Most of developers are making use of best interfaces that accommodate all desired applications. But, not all interfaces are friendly. And it must be the priority to choose software, which offers most friendly interface. This can help to ease use and perfecting on that within short time. Output and input features must be countered.

After nearly fifteen years working as a web professional, there are many things I wish I’d known years ago when I was just getting started. You might think that the top items of regret are about not learning or mastering technical skills or tools like Ruby on Rails, jQuery, Node.js or Fireworks. Not so.

In fact, I believe the tools and web programming languages you use are one of the least important factors.

Anyone who has worked in the industry of building websites for a while has seen many trends start, prosper and burn out. They understand that tools and certain technical proficiencies boom and bust constantly, but the person behind the work stays put.

In this article, I’ll share with you 8 things I wish I had known about web development as a profession and as an industry.

1. The Tools You Use Don’t Matter

Today, using FrontPage professionally will get you a lot of flack. The <blink> tag went extinct (thankfully). Yahoo! has gone from hot property to ghost town. Terms like Perl, WAP, WML, and FBML are becoming or have become relics in spite of once being requirements for many web projects. MySpace was steamrolled by Facebook. AOL was crushed by broadband internet connections.

Ten years from now, will you still be able to impress prospective clients with your insights on HTML5, CSS3, and Flash/ActionScript?

Because the tools we’re using now will be vastly different or completely gone in 3-5 years — which seems to be the average lifespan of many web technologies — the means to get the job done are almost irrelevant. The experts of tomorrow are the complete novices of today, and the gap between today and tomorrow is especially short in the web industry.

Those who are open minded, constantly learning, and in a never-ending state of growth and education are those who will stand out and succeed in the long run.

2. Depend on No One for Experience. Create It Yourself.

I’ve been fortunate enough to have interviewed many web designers and developers for full-time positions and projects over the past decade. One of the things that always shocks me is how many aspiring applicants have a weak or non-existent portfolio and are counting almost exclusively on their employer to provide growth and interesting projects.

Nothing screams laziness like an idealistic, up-and-coming web professional with an empty portfolio.

Every community is peppered with nonprofit groups, churches, clubs and small businesses who would love to have help with their websites. Sure, the budget might be low or even non-existent, but the value you get from a solid portfolio outweighs any check you might be able to pull out of a small client of this type.

Just remember that you are competing with people who have broad portfolios packed with polished samples and client testimonials whenever you go into that interview.

If you can’t find someone to do projects for, show some passion for your craft by creating projects for yourself.

If you don’t have enough interest in design and technology to do any of the above, you seriously need to reconsider your choice of career path. Without some passion for learning, growth, and without the desire to be a self-starter, a career in this field will not be very fruitful.

3. Specialize in Something

From the outside looking in, clients see a world overflowing with web designers and people who claim to be experts at everything from usability, to programming, to SEO, to design.

These prospective clients have few ways to separate the true pros from the hobbyists. The result? Your unique talents and abilities are drowned out in a sea of self-proclaimed gurus and become a commodity like potatoes or turnips.

To stand out from the pack, you need to come up with a specialty. A flag to fly. Something that makes you specially suited for specific projects. It might be small e-commerce sites. Maybe it’s websites for churches. Perhaps it’s social media marketing sites.

Whatever it is, you should focus on it and turn it into the differentiator that will help you cut through the noise and establish yourself as a niche expert. Telling people you’re a “web developer” is selling yourself short.

4. It’s OK to Say “No”

Assuming you’ve put together a solid portfolio and know where your passion lies, it’s time to get picky. I’m not suggesting that you turn down projects just to be a snob, but you can differentiate yourself by only accepting projects that make the most out of your skills; projects that shine a spotlight on what you do best.

If you’re a great designer, focus on projects that depend most on your skills; allow yourself to fail or succeed based on that. Don’t overreach and try to tackle an e-commerce site if that isn’t something you have the desire and passion to do. Don’t take on a Drupal project if what you really enjoy working on is WordPress. You’ll end up producing a project that you won’t be proud of in the end. Your lack of passion will show in the outcome.

Every project you choose to do will represent you to your next client. What do you want them to see?

It’s OK to turn down projects that simply don’t feel like a good fit. Perhaps the client wants to drive all the design decisions and how site layout will be constructed. If that’s not going to fit with your work style, you’re probably better off declining the project.

If the project is being managed by a team and there’s no clear decision-maker, that’s also a red flag warning you to consider moving on. There are many questions you can use to help get projects off to a great start and avoid pitfalls.

5. Defining Project Scope at the Start Is Extremely Crucial

Assume only one thing is true: Your client is skeptical and probably believes her 14 year-old nephew does exactly the same thing you do for 10% of the cost you charge. Other than that, you need to work with the client to carefully define and document everything before beginning any work.

The purpose of this scope-definition and discovery phase is to make sure the client completely understands what they’re getting. If they make an assumption about something that you failed to address, that’s your fault. You are the expert in the relationship and they are counting on you for clarity and guidance. Take your time and walk them through it in a professional way so you completely understand their expectations.

Scope out the entire project and specifically describe the deliverables and timelines. Social media integration, content development, SEO — all of this can easily fall into the category of “I thought that was included!”

By carefully detailing what will be provided to them, you won’t end up with a project that becomes an endless margin-eating monster.

6. The Smaller the Budget, the Bigger the Pain

Okay, this is a rule of thumb that’s not true in every single case, but I think most freelancers and contractors would agree that this is true more often than not.

It’s just a matter of economics. If you have a million-dollar budget and are only spending $50,000 of it on your website design, you will tend to have a more hands-off approach to the project than if you had a $2,000 budget and are spending half of it on your website design.

Larger clients tend to be managing numerous other projects, so they count on you more heavily to manage things for them and make the correct decisions.

Like many of you have found, smaller projects tend to have decision-makers who want to be much more hands-on and less willing to listen to your professional guidance and decisions. They simply have less money to spend and are putting up more risk.

7. The User Always Comes First

This can be one of the most difficult points for web developers to accept. Especially for beginning web developers, each project is an exciting opportunity to express yourself and let your creative genius shine. But it’s only appropriate if it enhances the experience of the users, and you are not the user.

It’s often argued that design is a vital part of the overall user experience and that the design needs to help the site stand out. I agree with that. However, some users simply don’t care. See Craigslist as an example. It’s a perfect example of an ultra-boring site with virtually zero branding. Yet it’s an undeniable success. I’d like to think that it would be a bigger success with an amazing design and interface around it, but the audience for classified ads simply doesn’t care.

Before you dive in head first and assume that a gorgeous design is a requirement, study and understand the users and get your arms around the purpose of the site.

Rely heavily on the business owner for additional insights into the minds of their customers, but always validate their assumptions with the end users.

8. Let It Go. It’s Theirs, Not Yours.

Once the project is finished, many clients will begin to make updates and changes to the site on their own. Even with a rigid CMS in place, many of them will find creative ways to take your baby and turn it into an unwieldy monster made of clashing colors, low-res photos and a disproportionately large logo.

Do your best to guide them, offer your services (at an appropriate fee), then allow them to move forward as they see fit. They are the customer, it’s their site, and you’ll need to let them take it where they want. Don’t hold a grudge, and be sure you capture the site in its original form for your portfolio!

If you think about shortcuts to modern applications, then you need to look for the assortment icons designs in Windows XP and Windows Vista. Why? The designer of icons have used a semi transparency effect for making the icons edges smooth so as to better mix with the environment. At present, anyone can produce best design icons through their computers at home. How? There are numbers of icons designs tools available through which users are getting right options to design these sorts of icons coolly as per their requirements. In this regard, you have the option to design the icons with putting semi transparency effects at your home through computer. Keep in mind that the semi transparency icons are having assortment effects in XP and Vista application. Before creating the icons, you need to consider about your computer configuration. In this way, you can perfectly design this sort of semi transparency icons through your computer.

Whereas Corel Draw and Adobe Photoshop are around for some time, buying and learning the heavyweight expert suite is overkill for the icon designer. In addition to, the tools are actually not just meant to cope up well with needs of the small arts designer. So, let alone the inability to save little more than the single format and resolution in the icon file, crafting the Windows XP icons puts some needs, which are just not there with big guys. Making the icon images needs very close attention to each dot on screen, as each pixel is very important considering icons get very small 16 by 16. Alternatively, you just do not need 99% of features, which bloat the Corel and Adobe products. Do you actually need all artistic filters that are found in the Photoshop work good for the high resolution of photographs however leave nothing however sort of small icon image with the counted pixels?

Recolorable icons designs are unique one with comparison to other because it’s changing the color. It is one of the advanced technologies that now vastly use in icons designs. These designs are also much essential for the web application that offers changing colors to creating any required files. If you are looking for this picture recolorable design, then you have required considering about the secret behind it. These picture designs have contained two bitmap files such as: a color backing at the bottom and semitransparent flashes. With the help of the semitransparent mask designers have offered the color backing shine. The shining mask required only the white color with different shading and transparencies mask only black. Due to these reasons, you can pick any color to create any sorts of change in the icons designs according to your requirement. In this regard, you can draw so many icons design by pick a single test color.

How we go about making the picture recolorable? Secret is that picture has 2 bitmap files: the semitransparent flashes or shadows and color backing at its bottom. Thus, we have a color backing shine by the semitransparent mask. Mask must look very much like this: How we draw this mask? It is very simple and you take a colored backing as well as put the shadows and flashes on the top. Shining mask makes use of white color with different transparencies and shading mask —just black. Color of backing is not very important and chooses any of the color you like, it can change anyway. In case, you draw many icons, then pick the single test color. Why we need shading and shining layers? We don’t know what color is selected by an user and icon must always look very good. With shading and shining colors result will be good.

Designing graphics on a budget has never been easy. Software developers use dozens, and often hundreds of small images (icons) throughout a single application. Custom ordering all of them makes little sense, unless you’re making a Photoshop killer or building a similarly ambitious project.

Stock icons are a perfect alternative to custom graphics for the rest of us. Stock graphics are instantly available, come with clear licensing terms, and eliminate waiting and guessing from your routine. With ready-made icons, you get exactly what you see, pay a discounted price, and receive your images in a matter of minutes – not days, weeks or months.

Every icon set is unlike another. The many collections of ready-made icon sets cover various topics, serve different platforms, and come with different licensing terms attached. And of course, the icon sets come in a wide assortment of sizes, color depths and file formats. Some icon sets are drawn better than others, and some have extra features such as a separate semi-transparent layer (the Alpha-channel) allowing the images blend smoothly with difficult backgrounds. Finding and choosing the right icon set can be just as difficult as ordering custom graphics to a designer.

Aha-Soft All Icon Sets http://www.aha-soft.com/iconsets.htm offer the ultimate answer to the entire stock icon set dilemma. This monster icon pack includes more than two hundred collections, or over 25,000 unique icons covering pretty much everything from social networks to medicine, financial and transportation applications.

All Icon Sets integrate multiple collections of icons. Each icon set is dedicated to a certain topic. There are icon sets for Windows developers, and there are icon sets for Android, Apple iOS, and Windows Phone apps, as well as Web portals, databases and online tools. No matter what platform you are targeting, All Icon Sets will have something for everyone.

With as many as 25,000 individual icons in 200 icon sets, the icon mega-pack includes images in a widest range of sizes, color depths, activity states and file formats. Depending on the target platform, the icons come in all sizes defined by the platform’s design guidelines. The sizes include resolutions of 16×16 to 512×512 pixels, depending on the platform and application of the particular icon set. The icons from All Icon Sets are provided in a combination of BMP, GIF, PNG, and Windows ICO formats. Vector sources can be provided with some icon sets including AI, SVG, PDF, CDR, XAML, 3DMax, and PSD formats.

All Icon Sets come with full-size, instant online preview. Visit http://www.aha-soft.com/iconsets.htm to check out previews, download free samples or place an order.